Al Pacino’s washed face emerges from the foam of the waves. There are some shells hanging there. The image of the American actor in his role as a human trafficker Scarfacebathed in the waters of the Atlantic for several weeks, printed on twenty-five bales of cocaine before washing up on a beach on the island of Oléron (Charente-Maritime) on November 15, 2023.

Such an arrival, whose market value is estimated at 1.3 million euros, is no longer unusual: it testifies to a strategy used by criminal groups that has become common on French coasts. This technique, known as “drop-off,” involves dropping cocaine from South America at sea so that a second boat can pick it up before considering marketing it on land.

In total, the Drug Enforcement Agency registered 36 discoveries of cocaine bales brought over the sea in 2023. This is the first time this count has been carried out, as these strandings followed each other at an unprecedented pace, essentially from the tip of Brittany to Pas-de-Calais: one remained on the ladder of a wind turbine off the coast of Fécamp in November 2023 (Seine-Maritime) hanging; another requires the closure of Saint-Jouin-Bruneval (Seine-Maritime) beach to summer visitors in early July; or these twenty-nine sports bags attached to life jackets found on the coast of the Cotentin (Canal), with a total of more than 1.2 tons of product, between February and March 2023.

In recent days the surf has revealed other surprise packages, such as in Soulac-sur-Mer (Gironde) on January 13th – a backlog too altered by its odyssey to be marketable.

“These episodes demonstrate an adaptive strategy by criminal groups, which consists of ensuring the transport of cocaine cargoes on the high seas by avoiding the most heavily monitored major ports, where criminal organizations had previously preferred transport by container shipunderlines Jérôme Sentenac, head of the strategy department of the anti-drug office. This effect of communicating vessels extends to the European level. »

Wide range of techniques

So recently in the Irish Sea, in the Strait of Gibraltar, off the coast of Sicily, blocks of cocaine were fished out of “drop-offs” … Even the Australian police discovered this ploy off the coast of a country that offers such an operation one of the most expensive gram of coke in the world.

But the transfer on the open sea must have become a fiasco for such seizures to be carried out on the coasts. They are the consequences of bad weather, poor coordination of troops or even a panicked reaction from traffickers who risk being discovered.

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